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' CNN Tom Perkins Says the Rich Should Get More Votes in Elections TIME Venture capitalist Tom Perkins is interviewed in his office in San Francisco, California September 12, 2011. Perkins is a co-founder of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and the backer of companies ranging from Genentech to Google. Email · Print; Share. So rich, so wrongNew York Daily News Tom Perkins sorry for ''...

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John Boehner has a song in his heart. That song is "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," which he was heard quoting from as he was busy passing a clean debt ceiling bill in his House. He followed up with another lyric from the tune: "Plenty of sunshine coming my way." Mr. Boehner is, of course, being amusingly ironic. He does not, in fact, have a song in his heart, and he is not looking for beams of sunshine heading his way from his fellow Republicans.
Boehner passed the clean debt ceiling bi...

'SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tom Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist who compared the plight of the wealthiest Americans to Jews in Nazi Germany, offered up a provocative new idea on what the rich deserve: more votes in public elections for every dollar they pay in taxes.
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CHILDHOOD

TWENTIES

While attending MIT, Perkins joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. Read Less

THIRTIES

196331 Years Old
In 1963, he was invited by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard to become the administrative head of the research department at Hewlett-Packard.
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He was the first general manager of HP's computer divisions, credited with helping shepherd HP's entry into the minicomputer business. During the 1960s, he also started University Laboratories, which was later merged into Spectra-Physics. Read Less

FORTIES

197341 Years Old
In 1973, with Eugene Kleiner, he founded Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the first Sand Hill Road venture capital firms.
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Later, Frank Caufield and Brook Byers joined the firm, eventually becoming named partners. Perkins served as a director of Applied Materials, Compaq, Corning Glass, Genentech, Hewlett-Packard, and Philips Electronics. Read Less

197442 Years Old
He served as the only chairman of Tandem Computers, from its founding in 1974 until its 1997 merger with Compaq.

197644 Years Old
Perkins was also chairman of Genentech from 1976 until 1990 when it merged with Roche Holding Ltd.
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During the HP/Compaq merger fight in 2001, Perkins was a member of the Compaq board and an outspoken supporter of the merger. He joined the HP Board of Directors in the merger, retired, and officially rejoined the HP board days before Carly Fiorina was fired from her posts as chairman and chief executive officer of HP. Read Less

LATE ADULTHOOD

199664 Years Old
In 1996, Perkins was convicted in France of involuntary manslaughter arising from a yacht-racing collision, forcing him to pay a $10,000 fine.

One business commentator, noting Perkins' prior experience with phone-hacking in the HP scandal, speculated that Perkins "may be the best hope" as News Corp. sought to work out of its phone-hacking scandal. <br /><br />Perkins has two children, with his first wife, the late Gerd Thune-Ellefsen. After she died in 1994, he married romance novelist Danielle Steel in March 1998; her book The Klone and I (ISBN 0-385-32392-1) was about their friendship. Read Less

In January 2006, Perkins published his first romance novel, Sex and the Single Zillionaire, (ISBN 0-06-085167-8) which he dedicated to Steel.
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The plot of the book is based on a reality TV idea which was pitched to Perkins, where he would date a series of women and choose one to marry. He claims that "no 'ghost' did the writing." Proceeds from the book will be donated to Harvard University. Read Less

Perkins resigned from HP's board on May 18, 2006, over the actions taken by the board's chair, Patricia C. Dunn, to ferret out the board-level source of media leaks using methods Perkins considered unethical and possibly illegal.
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HP gave no cause in the SEC-required 8-K filing, and according to Perkins refused to amend the filing to indicate his reasons for resigning. In response, Perkins disclosed his reasons publicly, triggering an SEC investigation and significant media interest into HP's leak-finding activities.<br /><br /> Perkins's residential phone records were obtained through a method known as pretexting. AT&T confirmed that someone pretended to be Perkins, using his phone number and his Social Security Number. HP confirmed that the investigative firm they hired used pretexting to obtain information on the call records of the directors. HP's investigation found that Dr. George Keyworth II was the source of several leaks. Read Less

At the May 18, 2006 board meeting, Dr. Keyworth admitted to leaking information but refused to resign after the board passed a resolution calling for his resignation.
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HP's board decided on August 31, 2006 to not renominate Dr. Keyworth for another term as director.<br /><br /> The SEC and the State of California have both begun inquiries into the methods used by HP to investigate its directors. Read Less

In July 2006, he formally launched his 289-foot sailing yacht named The Maltese Falcon, at the time the world's largest privately owned sailing yacht.
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The yacht was listed for sale in 2006 on Yachtworld.com, the asking price being €99,000,000 with engine hours listed at 1,890 hours. Read Less

As of 2007 Perkins sits on the board of directors of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, where he serves with Viet D. Dinh. Dinh represented Perkins in the HP board affair. In July, 2011, Dinh and fellow News Corp. board member Joel Klein took over the investigation of the News of the World phone hacking affair and related Corporation issues.

In November 2007, Perkins published a memoir, Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins. (ISBN 1-59-240313-1) Perkins discussed the book, his time at HP, and his sailboat with Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes in September 2007.

An account of Perkins' building of The Maltese Falcon – Mine's Bigger: The Extraordinary Tale of the World's Greatest Sailboat and the Silicon Valley Tycoon Who Built It by Newsweek's David A. Kaplan – was published in 2007.
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The book in 2008 won the Gerald Loeb Award for best business book of the year. Read Less

200977 Years Old
Perkins sold the yacht for £60million in July 2009.
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He has houses in Belvedere, Marin County, California, and spends about two months a year at Plumpton Place, his Elizabethan mansion in East Sussex, England, which once belonged to the Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. Read Less

201179 Years Old
Perkins was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured which premiered in 2011.
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In 1984, Perkins wrote and published a first hand account on the World Class collection of his pre-WWII classic car collection, titled Classic SUPERCHARGED Sports Cars (ISBN 0-9612268-0-3). This is a personal account of the handling and "simultaneously exciting and exasperating" characteristics of his collection of supercharged Bugattis, Mercedes, Alfas, one Squire, and his Duesenberg Type SJ. Read Less